Last night, at Closely Crafted’s first-ever fundraiser at Bar Blondeau on the rooftop of the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, the napkins were emblazoned with a startling statistic: “While the majority of customers want sustainably made clothing, only 14 percent find it important that their clothing is produced locally.”
And that’s exactly what the evening was raising awareness of—the preservation of craft in the American fashion industry, specifically the new nonprofit’s Move the Needle campaign, which aims to gain funding for its soon-to-be-launched apprenticeship program that will train emerging talent. Tickets ranged in price from $175 to $450, with 100 percent of the proceeds going directly towards the launch.
Closely Crafted founder Gigi Burris O’Hara, along with members of the industry including Alejandra Alonso Rojas, Micaela Erlanger, Alexandra O’Neill, and more showed up to support a good cause, soak up the sunset views, and interact with the on-site weaving activation—a 10-foot circular loom made in collaboration with Brooklyn-based weaving studio and arts center Weaving Hands. Guests were asked to weave together a piece of remnant fabric from designers that invest in local production, like Brandon Maxwell, Puppets and Puppets, and Theophilio, to name a few.
“The installation is meant to represent that we all need to save craft together,” O’Hara says, adding that Closely Crafted plans to weave a textile out of all the different designers’ fabrics. Her decision to start the organization, however noble, was admittedly personal. “I’m a milliner who runs a factory that’s been around for over three generations; if something happened to [those craftspeople], I wouldn’t have a business. We want to capture the generational knowledge of retiring masters and transfer that knowledge to undeserved communities; a new generation of creators.”
The campaign extends to emerging brands, too. “As an emerging brand, you don’t have funding to take your production to Italy. And if we don’t have access to luxury artisan craft, we will not have emerging brands,” she adds. “Marc Jacobs supposedly started with 12 pairs of pants in the Garment District. What if we didn’t have access to that?” God forbid!
Click through our gallery below for a look inside the event.
Claire Stern is the Digital Director of ELLE.com. Previously, she was Deputy Editor of ELLE.com. Her interests include fashion, food, travel, music, Peloton, and The Hills—not necessarily in that order. She used to have a Harriet the Spy notebook and isn’t ashamed to admit it.
